Miss Denmark 2016 Stripped of Crown

Christina Mikkelsen, Miss Denmark 2016, was stripped of her crown due to allegations linking her to a criminal investigation of her ex-boyfriend according to a press release on the Face of Denmark beauty pageant Facebook Page.

According to Forbes Magazine, Mikkelsen’s ex-boyfriend, Teodorin Obiang, is the vice president of Equatorial Guinea and the president’s son. The investigated ignited after his $100 million yacht was seized by the Dutch in Holland in December. The investigation claims he has spent his country’s treasure on himself. He allegedly used these funds to purchase the yacht as well as Ferraris, Lamborghinis, an Aston Martin, and a Bugatti.

Mikkelsen competed at Miss Universe a few weeks ago. She was favored by many to make the Top 13 after her performance in the preliminary competition. Her evening gown performance garnered much attention as she flowed across the stage in a baby-blue gown, landing her in many Top 10 lists. Unfortunately, her name was not called into the Top 13 during the final night of competition on January 30th.

“Christina won the title Miss Universe Denmark and went to represent Denmark in the Philippines,” according to the release. “Ever since the beginning she has been very determined and goal oriented, which we in Face of Denmark found very positive in this very competitive environment of international beauty pageants and she did the best she could, I am sure.”

According to the Face of Denmark, the organization was aware that Mikkelsen had previously dated Mangue. By the time of the competition, the two had broken things off and there were not any allegations against either of them. The organization was made aware of the investigation into the alleged money laundering. However, the organization recognized that these were just allegations at the time.

“Being part of money laundering is of course a breach of our agreement but allegations are just allegations until the opposite has been proven by the court and at that point the allegations were all about her ex-boyfriends possible actions,” said the organization. “Furthermore, she had already represented Denmark at Miss Universe, which is of course the main activity according to our contract with our representatives/titleholders so we had no intentions of dethroning her and we definitely did not want to create any negative media coverage on her at that point, it served no point and for her sake we wanted to keep all media focus away from her in case the rumors of allegations should become more than that.”

The organization then learned Mikkelsen might have been involved shortly after she returned from the Miss Universe Competition. In addition, they received information the 24-year-old beauty was planning appearances on TV with hard criticism of the pageant.

“Due to the sudden hard media coverage on her own part, we felt obliged to dethrone her in order to show the world that our organization of course does not support the actions behind the allegations and that she has in several other points acted in breach with our contract,” the organization said.

The former queen took to Facebook to share her thoughts.

“Hi everyone. I gotta admit the last few days have been overwhelming,” she said. “I regret absolutely nothing.”